It’s probably going to come as no surprise to you that YouTube is tracking what you watch, assuming you’re signed into your Google account: It means you can get back to favorite videos you want to see again, and it helps improve the quality of the recommendations that you get from the YouTube algorithm.
You don’t have to accept this default state of operations though. It’s possible to see your viewing history, to remove items from it (if you don’t want your kids’ YouTube obsessions to affect your recommendations for example), and to clear it altogether.
We’ll take you through all the options available to you, so you can tailor the way your YouTube history works,—and so you know exactly what’s being logged about your viewing habits over time.
Finding your viewing history
To find your viewing history on the YouTube website, open up the left hand navigation panel (if it isn’t already open) by clicking on the three horizontal lines (top left), then choose History. In the Android app, tap your profile picture (bottom right), then View all next to History; on iOS, tap the Library icon (bottom right), then View all next to History.
Assuming viewing history is enabled, you’ll then be shown everything you’ve watched recently on YouTube, with the most recent views at the top. There may well be a few videos you’ve forgotten about here; this is the place to go to if you want to rewatch something good or useful that you’ve seen lately.
If the video that you’re after isn’t listed, you’ll see a search box for your watch history that you can make use of. As far as we can tell, this searches through video descriptions as well as their actual titles, though it’s not as comprehensive as the main search function for YouTube as a whole (you don’t get any filters to narrow the results down, for instance).
If you’re viewing your history…
Read the full article here